Talk:Comic strip

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move discussion below toc

Would it be a good idea to sort these a bit? Some (like Bizarro) are single-frame comics, others (like Calvin & Hobbes) are single-strip comics, and finally others (like Prince Valiant) have long storylines. Or are there better ways? --Pinkunicorn

Personally, I would sort Bizarro as a "cartoon", and "Prince Valiant" as a plain "comic", in my book, only comics in strip-form (Such as "Calvin & Hobbes" and "Snoopy") should be considered "comic strips".

Note that it isn't because of the long storyline, but because of the full-page format, comics such as "Rip Kirby" and "Modesty Blaise" are still "comic strips" in my book...

I think the single, general alphabetic list is useful too. So if you want to add a different scheme, please don't replace the current one.--LA2

Someone knowledgeable enough about them could create alternative schemes and link to them from this page. I'm not that person though. ;-)

The phrase "comic strip" is the one actually in use, and it includes everything from Prince Valiant to Zippy the Pinhead. In the US, comic strips usually appear in newspapers, but also appear in, for example, Boy's Life magazine. In England, they usually appear in weekly comic papers, though more and more UK newspapers carry daily strips, often in colour. The most famous UK strip is probably Modesty Blaise, though The Perishers also has its followers, and, of course, Jane has a certain appeal. In the US, there is then a subdivision into daily and Sunday, and into strips (wider than they are tall) and panels (taller than they are wide). Then Sunday strips are subdivided into full pages, half pages, thirds, tabs, half tabs, quarters and odd sizes. Rick Norwood 19:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is also the idea of the comic book as a collection of comic strips. This would include British publications such as Beano and Whizzer and Chips. Watch out for those waves of childhood nostalgia... -- PJL

Don't forget web comics. That's a topic that deserves it's own category. From kevin & Kell to Sluggy Freelance to Sinfest, some of the most interesting and amusing new talent is found only on the net as "traditional" avenues won't touch them. -- PAL

This ought to be moved to the more standard "List of comic strips". This would also serve to disambiguate it from the (more or less inevitable) article about the Comic Strip, a Channel 4 comedy series of the 80s. user:sjc

OK, seems a good idea to me. No sooner said than done Malcolm Farmer

The Funnies

I'm trying to locate the origins if the term "the funnies". Can anyone point me in the right direction?

nalilo

According to www.etymonline.com: "funnies "newspaper comic strips" is from 1852." The origins is probably that most of them were "funny", I'd guess that comic strips weren't particularly common by that time, the reference were originally to "cartoons".

I went to that site and here is what it said (no mention of Funnies):

[quote]that of "comic book or strip" is from 1889. Comic strip first attested 1920; comic book is from 1941. [/quote]

________________

Comic strips were called "Funny Papers" and Funnies in the 1920s. Here is a better explanation of the changes in the name:

http://www.mtannoyances.com/?p=566 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.16.31.83 (talk) 18:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More background on Funnies: http://comicgeekos.blogspot.com/

The newly added line about the 'bestesteseded' web comics is a little too POVERTY. ike9898

Name of a comic strip fame?

Could someone tell me what is the preferred term for a single frame, pane, or cell of a comic strip (i.e., that which there are typically three of in most Sunday funnies)? Thanks. — Jeff Q 09:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I just looked in a half-dozen books of comic strip criciticisim. They all use the word "panel" to describe a single image, usually surrounded by a frame line, representing an instant of action. Gwil 06:41, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch! — Jeff Q (talk) 08:29, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

French interwiki link

I am a Wikipedia newbie, and would like to conform to the rules. Not long ago, I added an interwiki link to the Comic strip article, leading to the French Wikipedia article "Bande dessinée". It was quickly removed, with the comment "removed interwikis to comics, not comic strips". Now, in French, "bande dessinée" is the most common phrase for either "comic book" or "comic strip". If you want to learn what French Wikipedia has to say about comic strips, the "bande dessinée" article is the place to start. That article even says, "Some specialists consider that the first bande dessinée in the world was Yellow Kid...". So my question is, must interwikis link to exact synonyms, or can they link to the best matching article even if it's a broader term? Gwil 05:16, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pehr Nordquist

I removed the paragraph "As early as 1801 established Swedish fine artist artist Pehr Nordquist, dead i Napels 1805, draw a two-page eight panel comic strip.", and I suppose it behooves me to explain why.

There are many possible precursors to the modern comic strip. Pehr Nordquist, Willem Bilderdijk, Rodolphe Töpffer, Christophe (Georges Colomb), William Hogarth, Caran d'Ache (Emmanuel Poiré), A. B. Frost, Richard Doyle, Gustave Doré, Wilhelm Busch, Benjamin Rabier, and W. Fletcher Thomas have all been cited as forerunners. They all created sequential graphic narratives before the Yellow Kid. Most of these narratives had captions under the pictures. As far as I know, none of them had speech balloons, and none of them was published on a regular schedule. Comics authority Thierry Groensteen, preparing an exhibition in Angoulême, chose Rodolphe Töpffer as the most important originator of the comic-strip form. E. Wiese titled his reprint of two Töpffer works "Enter: The Comics". Pehr Nordquist, by contrast, isn't even mentioned in the Swedish Wikipedia. According to the same account of Groensteen's choice, Nordquist's works remained confidential and unpublished (vertraulich und unveröffentlicht blieben).

Why do we distinguish Wilhelm Busch from all the others, by mentioning Max and Moritz? Because he had a clearly demonstrable influence on the earliest American comic strips. If Pehr Nordquist had even the slightest influence, I haven't heard about it. Gwil 04:29, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just because you haven't heard of it, doesn't mean there wasn't any influence. 199.175.128.1 16:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it was unpublished and confidential, how can it have been influential? Fram 18:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

European comics

Nothing about European comics here. I started to look around a bit, and found articles Comic book, Comic strip, European comics and American comics. A bit confusing. Is "comic strip" the sum of "European comics" and "American comics" (and possibly others like Manga)? In that case this article should mention this and most of the information should be moved to "American comics". Any comments? Piet 11:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the base article is at Comics. But your ideas aren't without merit and there is a similar plan at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics/organization but it is yet to implemened. The problem this article suffers is that the term comic strip means something different in the U.S. than to us Europeans. The Americans have concentrated the meaning only on Newspaper strips. Hiding talk 14:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree: this is almost entirely about US comic strips. Diomedea Exulans (talk) 07:08, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The comic strip, like jazz, is an American artform. A few European and South American newspapers picked up the idea, and they created a few major strips, such as "Modesty Blaise", "Agatha", and "The Perishers". Modesty Blaise is mentioned in the article, The Perishers is in the list of comic strips and has its own article. I've added "Agatha" to the list. She really should have an article of her own. But most comic strips, even in European newspapers, are American. The European comic album is really a different artform, though there are similarities -- long stories told a page or two at a time. Of course, with the advent of internet comic strips, the strip has become totally international. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:20, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"most comic strips, even in European newspapers, are American." and the rest of your post seems to equate Europe with the UK. Many comic strips in Western Europe, outside the UK, are Franco-Belgian comics, with things like (in the early days) Tintin, and later Spike and Suzy (over 20O million copies sold in book form). At least for France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, most of the comic strips in newspapers were and are local, although in recent decades the number of comic strips has diminished. But e.g. the best sold comics in Flanders are still books with complete stories of local newspaper comic strips. Fram (talk) 16:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I have newspapers with original strips from both continental Europe and South America, but the ones I have usually run mostly American strips, with a small number of non-US strips. Still, this article would certainly benefit from more about non-US comic strips. I hope you will contribute. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:51, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mergers

I guess I lean rather weakly to keeping an article on the newspaper comic strip, since the term comic strip is not used to define the newspaper comic strip in many parts of the world. That said, I concede these articles need work to express the differences, and would not oppose a merger on the understanding that such a merger could be undone in the future when the articles merited it. Hiding talk 16:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Web 2.0 comics?

Web based comicstrip generators have been around for a while, long before any web 2.0 hype. This renders the section regarding web 2.0 comics pretty much meaningless, and I suggest it be removed.

How to Resolve Excess Length of Page

I have recently started reviewing a book indicating which comic strips were available for publication from syndicates through 1995, with the intention of including those strips which had been available from these syndicates for at least ten years. I have to date added all those listed in the book which qualify by this 10-year rule whose titles begin with "A" or "B", and found that the page as it now exists is already longer than is desired. I would suggest possibly that, as is the case with the list of DC Comics and others, the individual entries be shortened to include only the name of the strip itself, the years in which it ran, and possibly the Reuben Award status and country of origin, dropping all the data about creators. Badbilltucker 19:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

UK Newspaper comics?

http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jong003were01_01/jong003were01_01_0002.htm

Could anybody help me with an issue involving British newspaper comics? The link goes to the start of the first (important) Dutch daily newspaper comic (1922), scroll down until the heroes meet a sort of an elf and a pig coming out of the London Evening News office in Fleetstreet. That elf-pig combination had its own comic in the London Evening News in that time, but I cannot find any indication what their names and the name of their series were. It is of some importance for the development of the history of Dutch (newspaper) comics, as it was the first comic series published in a Dutch newspaper.ThW5 09:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could try asking the British Library:

British Library Newspapers

The British Library
Newspapers Colindale Avenue London NW9 5HE United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7353 Fax: +44 (0)20 7412 7379
Email: newspaper@bl.uk

I'm not sure when I could get up there and look at a copy, I don't get much free time. If the Library themselves won't help you could try asking on the UK noticeboard or mailing list for someone to pop in and have a look at a 1922 edition of the paper. Hiding Talk 19:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Newspaper comic strip with comic strip

I think Newspaper Comic Strip and Comic Strip could be merged, they are essentially the same thing. Dragon Expert 14:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not not? The only difference is the prefix "Newspaper", which really serves no real significant purpose. I agree -- merge the thing! -- Jason Palpatine 02:40, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to agree with the merging, possibly add wording into this article if it doesn't already exist. | Chris 01:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They're not the same thing depending on what country you live in, but the articles may not have the depth as yet to justify existing apart. In Europe a comic strip can exist other than in a newspaper, whilst in the US the terms are synonymous. Hiding Talk 16:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that information can always be added to this article if it doesn't already exist at this point. Chris 01:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uppercase only?

Does anyone know why most comic strips use uppercase only? There's gotta be a reason for such conformity. Xiner 22:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When comics were all lettered by hand, and printed on cheap paper, the all uppercase improved readability. Some modern comics use other cases. Sandman is a good example. But Sandman is often hard to read. Rick Norwood 12:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mainly it's because all uppercase letters are the same height. Some lowercase letters... g, j, p, q, and y... have tails that drop below the baseline. When you're printing by hand, you have to allow extra space between the lines to prevent the tails from bleeding into the line below. But by printing all in uppercase, you don't have to worry about tails. You can reduce the space between the lines, and fit more words into a balloon. WaxTadpole (talk) 21:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone have a reference for this? It's great info that should be included in the article. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 00:10, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Genre?

Can someone who knows more than me flesh out the genres section a bit? For example, I remember Bill Watterson mentioning that he originally wasn't keen to do a kid strip because of Peanuts' dominance. There must be plenty of other genres. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TimNelson (talk • contribs) 06:03, 8 September 2007 (UTC) AND NONE OF THIS IS TRUE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.236.145 (talk) 22:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would think these would be appropriate breakdowns of comic strips:

1. Political

2. Parady/Satire

3. Family Life/Children (Family Circle)

4. Adventure Story

5. Superhero/Sci-Fi (Superman)

6. Mystery/Detective

7. Anthropomorphic

8. Romance/Soap

9. Workplace (Dilbert, Cathy)

10. Slice Of Life

Same Ideas, Same Day: Coincidence?

I notice every once in a while that different daily strips will have similar themes on the same day. For instance, "The Family Circus" and "Wizard of Id" will both reference top hats.

Is this just a coincidence or is there some kind of comic writers' "book of ideas" that creators can refer to for certain days? Has anyone else ever seen these similarities? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.23.49.39 (talk) 18:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Coincidence. The same thing happens in many other areas -- there will be two tv shows on the same night both about elephants, and so on. The number of comic strips is large, the number icons not as large as you might think. This is a version of what statistiticans call the "birthday paradox". If you have, say, thirty people in the same room, the odds are very good that two of them will have the same birthday.

On the other hand, if Family Circus runs a gag and, six months later a lesser strip runs an almost idintical gag, that's probably plagerism. Many examples of this have been reprinted side by side. Rick Norwood 19:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the past comic authors have been known to post the same very obvious joke, even switching characters with each other on holidays including April 1st. If it's a small joke, it's not likely intentional. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.16.31.83 (talk) 19:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sources?

I see this article has been tagged for over a year... please do something about it. Or shall we nominate this article for deletion? Shinobu (talk) 14:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Single panel "comic strips"?

Wonderful though Gary Larson's work is and was, it was not a "comic strip". He drew single panel cartoons, aka gag cartoons. I think we might remove references to him and other artists who do only these single panel things. After all these are not sequential art, which this article is supposed to be about. Invertzoo (talk) 12:21, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While you are technically correct, virtually all books about comic strips have included panel cartoons. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond that scholars disagree. McCloud says panel cartoons are not sequential art, R.C. Harvey says they are. Since the comic strip is a form of cartoon, being a strip cartoon, it seems they technically are related. Hiding T 13:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

proof sheets

I added a paragraph about proof sheets, with a quote from an article on when King Features donated their's to MSU and Ohio State U. Do syndicates still use proofs or has electronical means supplanted them? Does the reference need any tweaking? I was surprised a Google of the term didn't readily find a good online definition or description, and it seemed to be appropriate to include it in this entry. Dgabbard (talk) 04:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Comics B-Class Assesment required

This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb (talk) 16:10, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mutt and Jeff

Removed this section on "the first daily comic strip." 1) It simply wasn't. 2) It claimed it was the first "successful" daily comic strip-- by whose standards? 3) Wasn't, as claimed, the first strip to use speech baloons-- Katzenjammer Kids did that before Mutt & Jeff 4) Simply put, the section was VERY short on information, and half of what was there was misleading or incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leisurely historian (talk • contribs) 15:03, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The only daily comic strip to precede Mutt & Jeff was A. Piker Clerk, which was canceled after less than seven months. Mutt & Jeff ran for 75 years. That's a pretty reasonable standard of success. (The Katzenjammer Kids wasn't a daily strip at the time Mutt & Jeff debuted. It ran on Sundays only.) Source: http://www.toonopedia.com and others. WaxTadpole (talk) 21:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's actually little documentary evidence that A. Piker Clerk was daily. The only thing that really suggests it is Moses Koenigsberg's account. As Alan Holtz has pointed out in the introduction to "The Early Years of Mutt & Jeff," Bill Blackbeard's file just shows 20-odd "Piker" strips appearing sporadically. Moreover, check out Holtz's article "The Daily Show" in Hogan's Alley v3 no4, where he points out that "Mr Peewee," which ran for around a year (1903-1904), ran daily for a good chunk of time-- a few months of which there were actually two DIFFERENT "Mr Peewee" strips in competing papers on a daily basis. Mutt and Jeff also took frequent hiatuses for the first ten years of its run. If you want a strip that ran every day from the get go and didn't take the breaks, you'd have to look as late as 1910 with "Us Boys." These things evolve over time, and it's often a matter of how you define what, which gets to be "first." Given the debatability of the claim, as well as the relative lack of substance in the section, I think it's a valid edit. (Not to mention that the standard for a strip's success shouldn't be matching one of the five-to-ten longest running strips in history. Was Calvin and Hobbes not a "success?") — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leisurely historian (talk • contribs)01:11, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

I've got some issues with the lead.

A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons  that tells a story, often humorous, 
though action-adventure. science fiction and soap opera-like dramas are also prevalent.

The phrasing "sequence of cartoons" sound weird, and there probably needs to be at least some mentioning of comics somewhere early on. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a consensus about really what the article should contain. To some people comic strip is just a synonym to the comic medium itself, to others, it's comics in strip format, etc. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note more focused rewrite. Pepso2 (talk) 15:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It's better now. Feel free to discuss my other points. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Newspapers shedding comic strips

There's an article at ABC News about newspapers reducing the number of comics strips they have recently, some papers (The Washington Times) dropping the comics section entirely. I thought it would be good to add to the article, but the way the article is currently organized, I can't see where it would fit. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 00:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Comic strip/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Well written article, but no references. - Mike

Last edited at 15:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 12:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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"Longest running"

If "Thimble Theatre" and "Popeye" are included together, shouldn't "Fritzi Ritz" and "Nancy" also appear? 2002:620D:3AF:0:2010:764F:9259:A55 (talk) 04:47, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

way too american (USA)-centered

I feel that the article, in its current state, is incredibly american-centered. For example, Mafalda is not mentioned ONCE in the entirety of the article, and other famous latin-american are not even acknowledged to exist. I am not really sure how i would personally make a change (i don't really edit Wikipedia myself), but seeing the article in it's current state makes me think that it could be improved a lot. Or also, Asterix is not mentioned in the article either, even though it is a notable french comic strip. SanaeKochiya727 (talk) 14:31, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think "Marmaduke" is a comic-strip

As of the time I'm typing this, "Marmaduke" is in some list of examples in this article, but according to terminology used elsewhere in Wikipedia it would be called "a single-panel cartoon", not a comic-strip, because this article says a comic-strip is a "sequence" of drawings/panels/frames. I'm pretty sure Marmaduke has only one drawing per edition. Am I wrong?2600:1700:6759:B000:E894:BFCC:705D:880 (talk) 06:48, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Christopher Lawrence Simpson[reply]